This invention concerns an aperture card camera with a device for spraying the exposed film under pressure with developer, fixer, and water or with developer-fixer and water.
The film is mounted in the aperture card. To produce a sufficiently fine mist, the processing fluids are sprayed through a nozzle under high pressure at about 3-7 atmospheres gauge.
In prior art aperture card cameras, this purpose has been achieved by maintaining the entire fluid system under pressure by means of a compressor. The fluid system includes, in addition the pipe conduits, two or three containers for the processing fluids.
Various governmental safety standards must be satisfied by these containers and pipes, among these standards is the use of special, expensive construction materials for the containers and pipes, and an expensive method of constructing the entire pressure system. The chemicals needed for the processing fluids involve very corrosive materials.
The fluid containers must be refilled from time to time. Not all containers are refilled at the same time, but rather at different time intervals, since the consumption of the respective processing fluids varies.
For each refill, the entire fluid system must be depressurized and after the refilling of the empty container or containers - each of which holds between 1 and 2.0 liters fluid - the system must be pressurized to the operating pressure. To this end an appropriately high-performance and hence expensive compressor is provided in most prior art aperture card cameras. The type of fluid system here involved excludes the use of larger containers for technical and economic reasons, especially because the pressure on the total container area rises with the size of the container.